Simon, not so much - notice Joss isn't listed in the people who were attending the meetings in the first place. Still, that's cool. Of course he'd just walk into the room and save the day out of the blue like that. He's Joss. Our own Big Damn Genius.

I think I could make a ritual sacrifice to a live chicken, but then there's the plucking, gutting, seasoning, basting and all that time in the oven. I wouldn't be able to finish the ritual by the time Joss left....sigh.

Keith G - The Man (in the form of SHIELD) decides all Supertypes must be registered to, and work for, the government. Many heroes don't want to be bent over a desk by The Man. Fighty fight fight. Wackiness, it ensues.

To be fair, Keith G, Civil War is much more than a "giant event" and i think anyone that actually sticks with Marvel over the next year or so will see that. Everything from House of M and Decimation to the upcoming Planet Hulk storylines will be tied together by this and the effects of what the Civil War itself will bring about are much more far reaching and status quo altering than most people are willing to believe right now.

Marvel are finally doing what so many comic fans have asked of them over the years and taking a risk. Decimation has already proven so many of the anti-Marvel brigade wrong and shown that they are willing to make a change. More importantly, that the change can interesting and forward thinking. Civil War, from everything i've read and been told, will only take that further and the Marvel Universe you see at the start of 2007 looks to be a very different place to what you are used to.

Keith G, seconded. Tragically, things aren't that much better at DC either. Ah well. Hopefully we'll get some good stories out of all this.

vampire With A Gun, let's take another look in three years, and see how much all these big plans actually mean in the long run. I've seen too many 'hot new crossover that will change the face of the comic book universe forever!' events to take them seriously, until they prove themselves otherwise. And this Spider-man business isn't convincing me any either.

To be fair, Keith G, Civil War is much more than a "giant event" and i think anyone that actually sticks with Marvel over the next year or so will see that.

I'll believe it when I see it. Not that the concepts behind House of M and Civil War don't intrigue me, but it's getting pretty difficult to keep track of everything - which is a Marvel strategy for people to buy more titles to try to clear things up.

Civil War, from everything i've read and been told, will only take that further and the Marvel Universe you see at the start of 2007 looks to be a very different place to what you are used to.

One thing that always makes me chuckle is the fact that people seem surprised that everything Marvel do is to make money. For me that goes without saying. They are a business and they are doing what they do for the primary reason of making money. The best way to do that is to get as many people as possible to buy as many comics as possible.

So yep, these company wide crossovers that effect every title that the company publish are done with the intent to make Marvel money. That should be accepted as obvious. The problem is that so many comic readers seem to be holding that against Marvel (and DC, to a lesser extent) these days.

When i was collecting comics as a kid i loved the fact that what happened in an issue of Spider-Man would have a knock on effect over in the Fantastic Four's book, or that something the Punisher did would be shown over in Moon Knight's title. The very nature of this combined comic book universe thrilled me. Then whenever a big event would happen it would thrill me all the more because it brought all the heroes together. Whether that be Secret Wars, Fall of the Mutants, Acts of Vengeance or whatever. They all told great stories and made the Marvel Universe seem all the more tightly knit together.

Back then, nobody cared about the financial reasons Marvel had to do this. Obviously something like Acts of Vengeance was meant to get the readers to pick up more books. Maybe to read a title they had not considered before but would perhaps stick with it after the crossover ended. So this has been a factor for as long as most of us have been reading comics. Why is it that nowadays it has become such a crime for Marvel to have these crossovers and be wanting to make more money by selling more books? That is just what any good business is all about.

In fact Marvel made an effort to cut back on crossovers in recent years. House of M was the first company wide event in a very long time, and even that only effected the individual books in a minor way, restricting most of the action to the mini series. Decimation isn't even an event, so much as the consequences of HoM seen in various, seperate storylines in a number of X-titles. Civil War, therefore, is really the first proper crossover event we have seen.

I get that many comic fans have become jaded with Marvel and DC in recent years but what you have to ask yourself is are things really any different today then ever before? I don't think so. The comic companies are still a business, first and foremost. Making money out of their product is what they have always done. What is more, they do it very well. For all the complaining most of the fans will still pick up more books during a crossover than ever before and thus prove Marvel are doing the right thing, at least from a business point of view. Marvel, for all the financial problems they have had in the past decade, are still the world's number one comic book publisher, so they are clearly getting it right.

As for what PMMJ said about longterm change, most events don't have the scope to change anything in a large or longterm way. Very few things that have occured in the Marvel Universe effect more than an individual corner of that world. Civil War touches everyone and effects the way heroes are viewed and allowed to operate the world over. I've been reading comics for the majority of my life and started collecting Marvel's books well over twenty years ago so i've seem my fair share of hype concerning the promise of changing the face of Marvel forever. Never did put much stock in it, simply because i realised that the event wasn't actually that far reaching and that things could always revert back to the way they once were, given a little time. Civil War is a very different thing. Mark my words.